5 "Oregon Trail"-style Games We Want For The iPhone

While we're excited about Oregon Trail for the iPhone, not every game works well for the phone's small touchscreen platform. The iPhone's lack of real buttons makes anything requiring precision and split-second timing a lost cause. Let's put it this way: iPhone Contra is a bad idea. But other games would work great. Here are five we'd love to see.

More than one generation of former youths have fond memories of Oregon Trail, the dubiously educational computer game that supposedly taught us about the harsh realities of frontier life, but really just gave us an excuse to go squirrel and bear hunting. Next week, the beloved game is finally coming to the iPhone. But not every classic game works well for the small touchscreen platform. The phone's lack of real buttons makes anything requiring precision a lost cause. Let's put it this way: iPhone Contra would be a train wreck. But other games would work great. Here are five we'd love to see on the iPhone soon.

Civilization 2 (1996) PC

Turn-based strategy games require no hand-eye coordination, no precise controls and no sense of timing. All they need is a player with the ability to make decisions. And Civilization 2 is perhaps the greatest strategy game ever made.

Though the game required an immense amount of micromanaging (something that was largely exorcised for the new Civilization Revolution), it was one of the most fun and addictive games ever made. To this day, hardcore fans use the Internet to share their own home-brewed scenarios and mods, infusing longevity and creativity into something that is positively ancient, as far as video games go.

With limited screen size and shorter play times, an iPhone version of Civ II might require the publisher to tone down the micromanaging a bit, but we would hope the game's better-loved elements would remain intact, including a robust scenario-building functionality and the built-in cheat modes (how fun was it to give your Stone Age civilization a few howitzers?)

Kings Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder! (1990) PC

When it comes to gaming, the iPhone's button-free interface has its shortcomings (we can just imagine what it'd be like trying to pull off a "Hadouken!" fireball in Streetfighter II). But it could be a perfect platform for replicating the point and click interface of old Sierra adventure games.

These games eschewed button mashing for a leisurely (if frustratingly difficult) jaunt through fictitious, surreal and extremely perilous worlds (it often took little more than a look in the wrong direction to incite the wrath of a murderer). While all three of Sierra's signature series have their perks (the Space Quest games were masterful in their self-referential sci-fi, and Police Quest presented an impressively gritty pre-The Wire realism), their crown jewel was the Kings Quest games, which transported gamers into a dangerous, bizarre and nearly impenetrable medieval world filled with gnomes, unicorns, witches and all sorts of magical and mythological creatures.

The best of these games--or at least the most fondly remembered in these quarters--may have been Kings Quest V. This was the first Kings Quest game that could be navigated by just clicking on the world around you. (Previous games required typing-out actions, such as "take stick" or "talk to person," and predicting what actions you had to type was a nearly impossible act of guesswork.) When the game was first released in 1990, it even claimed the title of best-selling computer game of all time.

F-Zero (1991) SNES

These days, 3D games are standard, but generating polygons was no easy task for old computers and game systems. In order to get around this technological challenge, early Super Nintendo programmers came up with clever ways of creating faux 3D-like appearances. Chief amongst them was the use of something called Mode 7 graphics, which allowed the creation of environments that could be rotated and scaled to create the illusion that a character or vehicle was moving through a 3D environment.

One of the first games to make extensive use of Mode 7 was F-Zero, a fast-paced, futuristic racing game, where the greatest challenge was simply keeping your car from blowing up after a few too many bangs. Because the game had very simple controls (there were no guns or blasters involved), it would be an ideal candidate for an accelerometer-steered racing game. And while designers could easily update the game's 19-year-old graphics, we'd love to see it left entirely intact, in all its 16-bit glory.

Pilotwings (1991) SNES

Like F-Zero, Pilotwings was an early SNES game that used Mode 7 graphics to simulate 3D. On the surface, the game sounded pretty boring: Fly a prop plane, hang glider or jet pack around through some targets and then land it. What gave the game legs was its immense number of modes and bonus stages and its notorious addictiveness.

Unlike most racing games, which typically require only sideways steering, Pilotwings puts you in the sky, where your upward and downward tilts are just as important as your leftward and rightward ones. So how cool would it be to simulate these many axes of movement using the iPhone's accelerometer? And unlike some other games on this list, this one could be played just for short stretches, making it ideal for quick pick-me-up mobile gaming.

The Three Stooges (1989) NES

Who remembers this one? I didn't even know who the Three Stooges were when the game came out, but I distinctly remember begging my parents to buy me this one. And what a bizarre, weird and amazing game it was. (Editor's note: A lot of people really hated The Three Stooges for NES, but the author stands by his assertion that it is, in fact, amazing.)

The MacGuffin was cliched: The Stooges need to raise $5000 in order to keep some evil guy from shutting down an orphanage. Raising the emergency cash forces them to take on a bunch of odd jobs, each of which translates into quick minigame "levels" (most of which are ripped straight from specific Stooges TV episodes.) This is where the game stops making sense. In one level, Curly must box against a champion pugilist in order to collect prize money. But instead of taking the obvious route of giving the player control over the fighter, the game inexplicably puts you in the shoes of Larry, who must run to an electronics store in order to purchase a boombox (apparently Curly is incapable of fighting without the right background music.) In another level, you earn money by throwing pies at rich tuxedo-clad restaurant patrons. It's never quite explained who is willing to pay you for this service.

But I digress. The reason this game would make a great iPhone port is simple: It's basically a bunch of minigames, and some of them were pretty decent. We'd love to see a mobile version that makes it easy to pull up your favorite levels without having to play the full game.

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